The ability to adapt or innovate lies at the heart of all life on this planet. It is both the driving force behind pioneering inventions and ideas that altered the course of history and also a determining factor in the success of certain species over others.
And, as history, biology, and industry have told us, those who fail to innovate, stagnate.
Although we might not still rely on it to catch our next meal, explore the high seas or scale castle walls, innovation is just as important today as ever.
In the complex 21st Century business world, an organization’s ability to adapt in line with changing business drivers, embrace new trends, adopt the latest technology and streamline enterprise processes can make the difference between success or failure.
For example, just look at how demands on the IT department have changed over time. The role of the IT department in the modern organization has never been more pivotal, yet our IT teams are also more stretched now than ever before, tasked with finding solutions to developing trends like Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) as well as managing day-to-day duties. When the old systems cannot keep up, it becomes necessary to modify or replace them.
However, while IT innovation is clearly the key to unlocking IT resources and simplifying life for the IT department, organizations should be wary of some cases.
Many IT departments assume that only big players can offer solutions like network monitoring, enterprise password management and desktop/mobile device management. In reality, these big players often end up creating greater IT complexity.
Due to their acquisition legacies traditional enterprise IT solutions are complicated, often requiring excessive resources and expertise to use and to integrate into existing systems.
For example, more and more of us are using mobile devices to access corporate files and programmes.
Compared with innovative new age applications designed with mobility in mind, traditional IT solutions cannot work with today’s technology and requirement.
The procedures and terminology are no longer relevant in the current context and may confuse the new methods and technologies being used.
It is clearly quite difficult to provide mobile access capability in a product using traditional IT solutions when compared to new age application designed with mobility as a top goal.
If organisations really want to reduce complexity, they need to be prepared to embrace innovation. There are a lot of simple, innovative solutions out there which will help improve productivity through fewer human errors.
For example, innovative cloud-based IT solutions are now available which offer users all the desired functionality inside a single application, downloadable in just a couple of clicks.
What’s more, because of the way that these applications are bought, it is possible for an organization to gain all the functions that they need, without paying for the features they will never use.
This ‘on-demand’ model is increasing in popularity as it relieves IT teams from maintaining and managing various parts of the IT estate, from software right through to hardware. For example, cloud offers a number of different on-demand services, depending on a business’ unique requirements.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), rents businesses the use of hardware like servers and storage software platforms which are not located in the office, but which employees can easily access through the Internet.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) lets organisations create and run useful programmes that aid business procedures, or the useful programmes themselves, which are known as Software as a Service (SaaS), available online and ready to use.
Each of the above solutions can dramatically reduce IT complexity enabling faster responses to market changes giving the company a competitive advantage. It also offers a simpler way of procuring, budgeting and maintaining essential assets.
Innovative solutions like this offer the benefit of freeing up IT personnel to concentrate on other business-critical tasks which aid organizations to focus on improving business productivity and ultimately contribute to profits.
The age when the sole providers of IT solutions were high-overhead sales organizations with high-margin product portfolios, is over.
A growing desire for innovative, real-time IT which matches the fast pace of business have permanently changed the shape of the IT software landscape.
Now, if they want to help control, manage and optimize IT infrastructures that are more consolidated, virtualized and automated than ever before, businesses must wave goodbye to the complex, and start making the most of the innovative technologies available today.